Editorial: Some things shouldn't change

Wednesday

Mar 13, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 13, 2013 at 1:48 PM

Like it or not, we’re traditionalists. We like antique desks, hardwood floors, classic Coke, the occasional Moonpie, Cheerwine with a hot dog, pizza with cheese (no pineapple please) and our news accurate, right off the press and tossed into our driveway every morning. That designated hitter thing? Forget it.

Halifax Media NC

Like it or not, we’re traditionalists. We like antique desks, hardwood floors, classic Coke, the occasional Moonpie, Cheerwine with a hot dog, pizza with cheese (no pineapple please) and our news accurate, right off the press and tossed into our driveway every morning. That designated hitter thing? Forget it.

So when it comes to ACC basketball, we’re older school than blackboards and erasers.

Yes, we remember back when the games involved only UNC, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, Maryland, Clemson, Virginia and South Carolina. And we miss those Saturdays when C.D. Chesley produced a slew of ACC games for local TV, with the marquee contest featuring the announcing team of Thacker and Packer (but we don’t miss Packer all that much). And we watched Thursday afternoon ACC Tournament games during the school day on little black and white TVs supplied by teachers more interested in the outcomes than we were. We all “sailed with the Pilot” during the commercial breaks.

And the tournament in those halcyon days was almost always in the venerable Greensboro Coliseum.

With all of that history it will come as no surprise that we find ourselves in agreement with the winningest college basketball coach of all time who earlier this week put his stamp of approval on neighboring Greensboro and its longtime role as ACC Tournament host.

“I would like to see the tournament always be in Greensboro,” Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski said via radio on the Blue Devils’ in-house radio broadcast.

We second that.

Yes, in the annual basketball battle among ACC teams, we take no sides. We respect every team, every administration, every coach and every player. No favorites here. Let the fans sort those issues out for themselves. But in the matter of where the ACC Tournament should be played, well, we like Greensboro just fine.

The Greensboro Coliseum is almost the ancestral home for the college basketball conference postseason tournament that sparked all the others that would follow. It’s still the champion-crowning jewel at the end of a long basketball regular season. It’s still the way a team is completely assured of a bid to the NCAA Tournament and the only route for the league’s cellar-dwelling teams to get there at all.

And Greensboro remains the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference offices, even though the league has sprawled a long way since its 1950s beginnings. The ACC has now expanded into New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Massachusetts and Georgia.

The announcement that Notre Dame would be allowed to join the ACC next basketball season arrived just in time this week to serve as a reminder of how much things change. In 2013-14, the Irish will be joined by Syracuse and Pittsburgh as the ACC’s newest entries. A year later Louisville will jump on board. In the meantime, charter member Maryland will depart.

Sigh.

Over the years, the league has tried venues outside Greensboro. The list includes nearby sites in Charlotte and Raleigh and more far flung places like Atlanta; Tampa, Fla.; Maryland and Washington. But 23 times, the Greensboro Coliseum has been where the league champion cut down the nets.

From Krzyzewski’s perspective, it’s the best site.

“During my 33 years in the conference, nobody does it any better — it’s not even close — than the people in Greensboro,” Krzyzewski said. “They put their arms around all the teams. ... They set an atmosphere that’s ‘Final Four-ish’.”

Greensboro has the contract to host the tournament in 2014 and 2015. After that, though, the forces that created league expansion may try to guide the event elsewhere, perhaps even New York or Boston.

Say it ain’t so.

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